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While there is a great need for a competent, comprehensive
history of what in Reformed circles is referred to simply as "The Christian
School," there is little danger that this monograph will fill that need. What
is attempted in the following pages is something less than a full-scale, detailed,
historical treatment of the stages, movements, and developments within the Calvinistic
school movement. It is rather an analysis in some depth of the main theoretical
foundations of that school system. The attempt has been to examine the "roots"
and the "soil" of the movement more than the details of the school system itself.
It is hoped that the present theoretical framework will serve later historians
in their search for meaning in the many facts about the school system.

The metaphor of the plant used in the title as well as throughout the treatment
is meant to convey the idea that the school system is a growing and changing
thing. It is a kind of movement, and not a fixed entity. Its origin, its roots
if you will, are not only simply in the past, but also in a particular and a
peculiar kind of past. It has been nourished, sustained and shaped by a number
of forces, institutions, cultures, and intellectual systems. Like a plant, the
school system has grown up out of and also put its roots down into these. The
delineating of the relationship between these roots and the school system itself
is the main objective of this monograph.

If the Calvinistic school movement is to function best on the American scene,
it must keep before itself a sense of its own past. If it is to retain its own
identity and if it is not to be swallowed up, it must realize that its educational
practice is rooted in quite different disciplines and intellectual traditions
than most of the existing school systems in America. If a proper understanding
of the past is necessary for the determination of future directions, then a
systematic backward look can be most valuable for making today's decisions.
This is not to assume that one makes decisions today based only on the past,
or that past decisions were always wise; it means only that decisions made today
without a look at the past will tend to be arbitrary (lacking in principle),
or aimless (lacking in direction), or, still worse, imitative (lacking in originality).
In the opinion of this writer all three of these dangers face the school movement
at present, and this sketch of the movement's intellectual history is offered
as a corrective of these dangerous tendencies.

Both primary and secondary sources were used in this study. Primary sources
included chiefly about forty years (beginning in the 1920's) of the annual publication
of the National Union of Christian Schools (referred to variously as the Christian
School Annual, NUCS Yearbook, and most recently Christian School Directory).
Some attention was also directed to a magazine, The Christian Home and
School, also published by the National Union; The Banner, official
organ of the Christian Reformed Church, and the Proceedings of the annual
principals' conference, printed in full or summary form since about 1948.

Secondary sources consisted of a half dozen books (shown throughout
in the form of footnote references) and periodicals associated with the Reformed
community. Special mention should be made of the extensive reliance of the writer
on the yet-unpublished doctoral dissertation of George Stob entitled The
Christian Reformed Church and Her Schools (Princeton Theological Seminary,
1955). Without the results of the painstaking research of Dr. Stob in original
sources, this writer could not easily have made sense out of trends since 1900.
Since the footnotes do not reveal this, my debt to him is hereby gratefully
acknowledged.

A final word of caution to the reader is in order concerning
interpretations of the "facts." It was Rousseau, I believe, who reminded us
all that "it is inevitable that the facts described in history should not give
an exact picture…; they are transformed in the brain of the historian, they
are moulded by his interests and coloured by his prejudices." The reader is
thus reminded of the thin line that separates editorializing from reporting
facts, even though the writer has tried to do the latter. To the extent that
some significant literature has escaped my attention, or that actual practice
and the literature do not give the same picture, to that extent the judgments
may be inadequate, or unbalanced and not truly representative of the Christian
School.

It is the hope of the writer that this brief sketch of the
past, which appeared originally as a series of articles in The Reformed Journal
in 1958-1959,* will serve to illumine the present and to cause us all, parents,
teachers, and scholars, alike to rededicate ourselves to the perpetuation of
the best in our tradition and to a realistic facing of the problems of the future.

Although the public school movement is by far the most significant
educational movement in America, it does not tell the whole story of American
education. And although the development of American democracy has gone hand
in hand with the development of the public school system, it would be unwarranted
to assume that the democratic way of life does not allow for anything but the
public school system as its institutional expression.

Minority groups of one kind or another have always been precious
to the democratic spirit. Whereas all authoritarian societies suppress and condemn
them, it is of the essence of democracy not only to tolerate them but to encourage
their continued existence. This is because in a democratic society, the presence
of alternatives, and a free choice between them by the people, are necessary
in order to carry on free exchange of opinion and interchange of influence.
This free exchange and interchange always requires differences in order to exist;
it requires, in brief, a multi-group social arrangement. Democracy has in this
sense always been pluralistic, and unlike such monolithic societies as Franco's
Spain or Hitler's Germany, it has regarded the minority voice as not only something
to be tolerated, but as something to be protected. It has recognized as necessary
to the continued existence of democracy the presence of a minority group, whose
function and role is to keep alive discussion and the possibility of progress
by offering alternatives to the majority opinion and by acting as the vocal
critic of the majority opinion.

Just as in politics this democratic spirit has fostered the
multi-party system, and as in religion it has prevented the establishment of
any single religion, so in education it has fostered a multi-group expression
in different and differing school systems. While the public school system has
for some time given institutional expression to majority opinion in the matter
of education, there have always been alternative school systems on the American
scene. Some were in existence before the founding of the public system, and
some have arisen as protest institutions since then, but they at present exist
alongside each other and in competition with each other. Just as a single party
system in politics would be inconsistent with democratic procedure, a single
system of schools in any society would be evidence of an authoritarian rather
than a democratic society. Monolithic societies, where there is one and only
one state-approved religion, or political party, or educational system, with
a subsequent condemnation of all others as divisive, stand as the very antithesis
of democracy. To the extent that the minority voice, and its institutional expression,
exists only by sufferance and not by right, to that extent the democratic way
of life stands in jeopardy.

It is tempting at this point to develop the implications of
this concept of democracy, and to examine the extent to which minority group
school systems in America do in fact enjoy only quasi-legal status, and are
only tolerated and not respected for their contribution. Involved, of course,
is the whole problem of their status as determined by their access to public
funds. It is quite clear at any rate that while minority group school systems
have always existed, their role and status in democratic society has not always
been acknowledged as necessary and good by all. James B. Conant's charge of
a decade ago that private schools are divisive and undemocratic is only one
of the more publicized expressions of this spirit. Many more recent examples
could be cited. However, while any recalcitrant minority is by some regarded
as an obstacle to the strengthening of democracy, it can just as easily and
legitimately be regarded as a prerequisite to further progress. In education,
such minorities, with their alternative solutions to the various problems of
educational theory, may well hold the key to future improvement. At very least,
in their role of critic, they prevent the majority from becoming complacent.

Whatever the grounds in democratic theory, minority groups
do continue to have their own systems. Although the vast majority of children
of elementary and high school age attend some public school, about fifteen per
cent do not. If higher institutions were included in the figures, the percentage
would be much higher, as almost half of those attending higher institutions
go to non-public colleges and universities. This figure for the elementary and
secondary level has not always remained constant, and there is evidence that
the trend is again upward within the past decade, signifying that people are
turning more and more to alternative means for the education of their children.
Already in 1951 the opponents of non-public schools showed concern over a 24
per cent increase in enrollment in private schools over a ten year period because
this was a rate nearly twice that of the public schools. Of these non-public
systems the parochial schools of the Roman Catholic Church are most significant,
enrolling over four million of the five and one-half million students not enrolled
in public schools. About half of all children of Roman Catholic parents are
in parochial schools. Next in significance are the Lutheran parochial schools.
Then there are the private academies and boarding schools, some of them religious
and some maintained for socio-economic and cultural reasons.

Besides these types of non-public school systems, there is
still another type which is neither parochial, nor public, nor private in the
usual sense of the word. Although it is religious in orientation and aim, it
is not maintained and operated by any religious denomination. It is a system
of parentally controlled schools now enrolling over fifty-two thousand pupils
in elementary and secondary schools in the United States and Canada (Christian
School Directory, 1962-1963). It has been in the making for approximately
fifty years, and has in the past two decades gained enough momentum to be considered
as a significant movement in American education. Its steady progress is clear
from statistics published by the National Union of Christian Schools, the national
service agency for this system. These statistics show an increase in enrollment
of 5 per cent from 1955 to 1956, of 8.7 per cent from 1956
to 1957, and, most recently, of 6.6 per cent from 1961 to
1962.

Its present philosophy of education, as expressed in this system,
offers alternative answers to a number of important problems in educational
theory. Just a few of the major issues represented in this system of schools
are: (1) the aims and purposes of education, (2) the locus of educational control,
and (3) the relationship between religion and education. The purpose of this
paper is not so much to argue for the rightness of these answers as to trace
their roots and examine their theoretical bases, so that both those within the
system and those without may better understand the origins of this unique system.
As has already been suggested this understanding is important, because failure
on the part of those within the system to understand wherein its theoretical
bases differ from those of public education can lead to an unwitting absorption
into its' own practices and aims of elements that are inconsistent with its
own theoretical bases. On the other band, failure to recognize wherein the aims
and purposes of the system do or can coincide with those of public education
can easily lead to fostering anticultural and separatistic values simply to
maintain distinctiveness.

We will now examine each of the major roots of this system
as well as the general soil in which they grew and which still sustains them.
Some of these roots go deeper into the past than others, and, as we shall see,
some of them even reach to other countries and cultures. These roots reach not
only into other countries and cultures, but also into specific intellectual
disciplines. Each of these will be examined in turnfor its effect in
shaping the present school movement.

While the roots of the Calvinistic day school movement reach
into specific cultures and disciplines, their common soil is that of the religio-philosophical
system called Calvinism. Founded by John Calvin in the sixteenth century and
given earliest cultural expression in Geneva, Switzerland, it has since then
played a crucial role in the spread of the Reformation to France, The Netherlands,
England, and America. In each of these countries it has affected not only specifically
religious life and practices, but social and political life as well. Although
it has assumed different shapes and different roles in each of these countries,
in none of them has it operated simply as a set of specifically doctrinal or
liturgical beliefs; it has always found cultural expression and produced an
effect upon economics, politics, and education, although not to the same degree
in all countries, R. H. Tawney's Religion and the Rise of Capitalism, Max
Weber's The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, and Ralph
Barton Perry's Puritanism and Democracy are just a few of the standard
works which have dealt with Calvinism in its social and economic forms. In The
Netherlands the rise to power of the Anti-Revolutionary Party under Abraham
Kuyper is another instance of this tendency of Calvinism to seek expression
in various cultural spheres.

It is not surprising therefore to find that in some countries
Calvinism has also found institutional expression in the field of education.
That the term Calvinism should imply an educational theory, more than
Methodism for example, seems strange except to those who know Calvinism as more
than just another Protestant sect. The field of education has also given recognition
to Calvinism as a world and life view with implications for education. As one
of the general works on education has it.

One of the fairest and most permanent influences of Calvinists in Geneva,
France, Holland, Scotland, England, and America was their contribution to
education (Monroe's Cyclopedia of Education, Vol. 1, p. 491).

There is here in this same volume also the recognition that
the interest of Calvinists in education has been more than simply that of church
extension, or of specifically religious and doctrinal instruction. Whereas it
is characteristic of Protestant sects to view day school educationasa means of evangelism or of giving religious instruction in the beliefs
of that sect, Calvinism has conceived of education much more broadly. The following
quotation is an indication that the writer was aware of this difference between
Calvinism and much of Protestantism.

The remarkable development of colleges and free schools among
Calvinists was not entirely due to any single theological tenet. . . . Calvin
and all these Calvinists had a common program of broad scope - not merely
doctrinal, but also political, economic, social - and similar ideas and institutions.
Their common program and their social insight demanded education for all as
instruments of Providence for church and commonwealth.

The last sentence in particular bears upon the direct problem
of the conception of the purpose of education, and the whole quotation is a
remarkable commentary upon what Calvinists have called the "Kingdom of God"
concept. Broader than the "Church of Christ" concept, it includes not only the
institutionalized church within its scope but all of man's relations with one
another, social, economic, and political. None of these areas is neutral, and
all come under the sovereignty of God. In education this means that commitment
to the Christian idea of God and commitment to a Biblical anthropology demands
a type of education not required by those not so committed. Since specific implications
for the role of the school in society, the locus of control of education, and
the role of religion in education will be detailed in later sections, it needs
only to be pointed out here that some rather specific type of education is called
for by the system of thought called Calvinism.

There are at least four major roots, all growing in this soil of Calvinism,
which have produced the present school system, and which have contributed to
a greater or lesser degree to making it what it is today. It is important to
note these, for there is no Calvinism pure and simple; there is only Calvinism
as it has expressed itself in various cultures and disciplines. Therefore we
must examine these rather than Calvinism in the abstract, for it is these that
have given concrete and specific shape to the school system.

One important root is that which reaches back to The Netherlands
of the nineteenth century. Without understanding something of the political,
religious, and educational situation there, certain values and attitudes embodied
in the present system become unintelligible. The second root of the school system
reaches into the Christian Reformed Church, a denomination of some 200,000 members
which celebrated its centennial in 1957. Here again, the connections and the
relationships between the school and this denomination are intricate,and
their lives are inextricably woven through each other. How the school system
became non-parochial, and to what extent it remains this, is involved in the
ecclesiology of the church, and no one can understand the school without understanding
its ecclesiastical roots in the church. The third root of this system is in
the Bible. While claiming to be non-parochial, it nevertheless desires to be
rooted.in the Scriptures of the Christian religion. Education in the nature
and destiny of man as expressed in Biblical concepts has always been of concern
to supporters of this movement, and its desire for a close relationship between
religion and education has been one of the main motivating factors behind its
establishment. The fourth root of the school system is not as securely imbedded
as some of the others. It has grown up in American culture and has been conditioned
in part by American ideas. Although these roots are growing, their growth has
in the past been uncertain and their direction unsure. How it can build further
roots in American democracy while retaining its other roots is one of the major
questions facing the school system today. How it makes the educational implications
of Calvinism come to expression in American democracy without either cultural
separation and irrelevance on the one hand, or absorption and loss of distinctiveness
on the other band, will determine the future role of the Calvinistic school
system in America.

This brief sketch of the four major roots of the school system
is preliminary to a more detailed survey and critique of each of these in a
separate section. The important point to note here is that each of these grew
in, and thus was shaped by, the intellectual system of Calvinism. While racial,
cultural, and ecclesiastical factors have modified that Calvinism, it has provided
the central and unifying philosophy.

Much of the uniqueness of the Calvinistic day school movement
in America is the direct result of taking ideas about education which were formed
in one culture, uprooting them from the place and forces which shaped them,
and then transplanting them in America. This is a rough approximation of what
a group of Dutch immigrants to America did in the middle of the last century.
This displacement of ideas about education from one cultural context to another
by an immigrant group largely unsophisticated in the ways in which cultures
affected educational theoryand practice led to some unfortunate consequences
for both the group and for American education. It has sometimes resulted in
representatives of this group firing off salvos at non-existent enemies, while
allowing others to infiltrate unnoticed. It has also resulted sometimes in criticisms
of the movement by those who misinterpreted its motives because they misread
the minds of its supporters.

Since the movement in America has its roots in the educational
and religious situation in The Netherlands, some analysis of this situation
is therefore necessary. Calvinism played a more influential role in the culture
of The Netherlands than it has in almost any other country. This profound impact
upon Dutch religion and life has been recognized by a recent historian of Calvinism
in the following words:

Calvinism, by common consent, was a powerful formative influence
in the national existence of The Netherlands and has continued to be of a
distinctive factor in the life of the Dutch nation.

The influence of Calvinism was in fact so strong that the Reformed
Church became the established religion and was connected to such political movements
as the struggle for independence from Spain and the establishment of a centralized
monarchy. Although the Calvinists did not succeed politically in either of these
attempts, the brand of Calvinism as represented in the Dutch Reformed Church
nevertheless remained the dominant religion of The Netherlands for several centuries
after the Reformation. Internal religious quarrels and a general decline of
interest in doctrinal purity in the state church led to the Secession of 1834
called the Aftcheiding. These dissenters withdrew from the established
church because they felt that it was losing its faithfulness to the Calvinistic
beliefs codified at the great Synod of Dort (1618-19). They also felt that the
schools under the supervision of the state church were becoming neutral in matters
of religion. This Secession was thus important for educational theory, for involved
in it was not simply church polity and doctrine but a way of life that had found
expression in an educational system. The educational objection was not so much
to the principle of state control as such, but rather to the attempt by liberals
to make the state school "neutral." (The objection to state control of education
in principle came later as part of the outlook associated with the secession
headed by Abraham Kuyper and referred to as the Doleantie.) It was this
passionate concern for doctrinal purity intermingled with an opposition to state
control of education that was carried over into America when these seceders
emigrated as a group in. 1847. Although this one movement does not tell the
whole story of the influence of The Netherlands on the Calvinistic school movement
in America, its impact was felt in later controversies within the school system
in America.

Although far too lengthy to be shown here, there is definite
evidence from original records and correspondence that one of the main causes
of the emigration to America was indeed the dissatisfaction with the schools
in The Netherlands. This centrality of education in the reasons for emigrating
to America has been generally recognized. The editor of The Banner,
the official organ of the Christian Reformed Church (which was later
to nurse this school system through its infancy) summed up the situation this
way:

The inability of the persecuted seceders of the Netherlands
to give their children Christian education was one of the principal reasons
why they resolved to leave the land of their birth and make a home for themselves
and their posterity in this new world. The hostile government of The Netherlands
refused to let those sorepressed men and women educate their children as their
conscience dictated (The Banner,March
28, 1947).

Thus the roots of the present Calvinistic school system extended
to a group in The Netherlands in 1834 who
risked both religious persecution and governmental opposition to defend what
they held to be the pure Calvinism of Dort. However, the impact of The Netherlands
onof Dort. Such a movement alone would not have provided the impetus
necessary to establish a non-parochial school system. In fact the extreme concern
for doctrinal purity and church traditions would definitely favor parochial
education.

The other movement which must be taken into account was of
considerably more power and had more intellectual leadership. It came to expression
in the Calvinistic revival of 1870-80 under the leadship of Dr. Abraham
Kuyper. The movement for the free Christian school, free from both state and
church domination and therefore linked more closely to the family, gained momentum
and found expression in The Netherlands not only in distinctive elementary and
secondary schools but also in the establishment of the Free University of Amsterdam,
owned by neither the state nor the church. This university, with Abraham Kuyper
at its head, was the center of theological and educational thinking which had
as a central concept the principle of "sphere sovereignty." According to this
view each area of human endeavor and investigation, i.e., science, theology,
art, business, education, has an inner structure and rationale of its own. It
operates according to laws and has a structure created by God, but each is in
its own sphere sovereign to itself. While there is inter-relationship between
spheres, there is no one sphere which has sovereignty over all the others. According
to this view, the science of education was such a separate sphere, and while
related to theology and the church and government and the state, it was subject
to control by neither. Since this view can easily be interpreted as a denial
that theology is the queen of the sciences and that all other sciences bow in
their conclusions to its findings, this principle of "sphere sovereignty" has
not found wide acceptance among ecclesiastics.

Proponents of this view fanned out from the Free University
and influenced education not only in The Netherlands but in America as well.
Numbers of professional educators, ministers, and energetic laymen carried these
Kuyperian-Calvinistic ideas with them when they emigrated to America. Their
presence here resulted not only in more interest and enthusiasm for education
itself, but also it led eventually to the administrative break between the Christian
Reformed Church and the school system around the turn of the century. The schools
became officially parental rather than parochial, and this was directly attributable
to the educational ideas and ideals of this Calvinist revival in The Netherlands.

A historian has noted and summarized Kuyper's influence on
the school system in America thus:

Kuyper's influence was powerful in the Reformed Church in America and especially
in the Christian Reformed Church there. His beliefs gave to people who wanted
for their children a Christian education based on Reformed principles a theoretical
foundation.... The Dutch immigrant's schools (primary and high), especially
his "Christian schools" as they are called in the Dutch communities, may be
regarded as his most striking contribution to the field of education.

A contemporary of Abraham Kuyper, and one who was also an effective
spokesman for the Calvinistic conception of the school on the political scene
in The Netherlands, was a man by the name of Groen Van Prinsterer. In the struggles
with the liberals over whether or not The Netherlands should have a single system
of state schools which were to be neutral as regards religion, he sided with
Kuyper. He emphasized the importance of having the parent retain direct control
of the school. He thus favored private schools which fused religion and education,
and opposed laws designed to make support of the single state school compulsory.

Parenthetically it might be noted here that the multiple educational
systems of The Netherlands of the present show the effect of this movement under
Kuyper and Van Prinsterer. These people fought for the right of parents to have
a school system reflecting their view of life. They opposed the principle of
a state church and a single system of schools based upon it because of two main
reasons. One was the principle of "sphere sovereignty" which held that the school
should be free of both the church and the state. The other was that education
could not be neutral and was inescapably religious. Their conclusion was that
the school should be parentally controlled and openly oriented to religion.
Since the time of Kuyper and Van Prinsterer their followers have even won for
themselves and their schools the right to equal status and support with respect
to tax funds. In a recent educational journal a government official in The Netherlands,
in the context of a discussion of freedom, revealed the present policy on this
matter:

School policy in The Netherlands stems from the idea that
parents are beyond others most responsible for the education of their children,
and for that reason they must in principle have the opportunity of sending
their children to the schools where education accords with their view of life
without the necessity to pay more for it.

Still speaking parenthetically, it is interesting to note that
the Calvinistic school in America has never made a sustained and systematic
endeavor to win such rights for itself. The Calvinistic school has never publicly
framed the issue so as to avoid the church-state issue, and thus one of the
greatest triumphs of the Calvinistic school in The Netherlands was never imitated
in America. This failure is due in part to the changing cultural conditions
under which the school functions in America, but it is also due in part to failure
to work for the Kuyperian ideal of religious freedom.

In surveying the further effect which The Netherlands exerted
on the Calvinistic school movement here in America, mention should be made of
one more individual. Following Abraham Kuyper, who had directed his attention
more to specifically political matters, came Herman Bavinck. This man wrote
extensively, and some of his writing was on specifically educational matters.
Although more of a theologian than an educator by profession, he nevertheless
gave evidence in his writings of being aware of trends in educational theory,
and of the implications of a Christian view of man for theory and practice in
education. Yet, although he helped the Calvinistic school in The Netherlands
to attain stature, his direct influence on the school system in America has
been less than it might have been had his works been translated into English.
Only one major work interpreting his views, and a few references to him scattered
in periodicals, remain to show precisely what his views were and what effect
they had on the system in America. Undoubtedly his chief influence lay in his
impact upon those who emigrated around theturn of the century, and perhaps
upon those of the first and second generation who could read him in the original.
His main interest seems to have been in the pedagogical principles as they relate
to classroom methodology. Since such educational psychology has less to do with
shaping the main outlines of a movement than other factors, there is little
in the present-day movement that could be directly traceable to his influence.
His main contribution was to undergird educational practice with a Biblical
anthropology, and this mainly in the early beginnings of the school system here
in America.

In this section I have tried to show that one of the roots
of the Calvinistic day school movement lay in The Netherlands, and that it has
shaped the movement in significant ways in the past. A passionate concern for
an intimate relationship between religion and education, and a conviction that
neither the church nor the state rightfully controls education: these are the
two major ideas to come from The Netherlands. They came from the Secession of
1834 and the Calvinistic revival of 1876, but not in any clear and unequivocal
sense. In many ways these two movements had opposing views on education and
this can be seen most clearly in the shifting and ambiguous relationship which
has existed for years between the Christian Reformed Church and the Calvinistic
school system. Although the story of the forces at work to separate the two
and the forces at work to bring them closer together will be told in the following
section, it should be pointed out here that these differences are in the church
because they were brought over from The Netherlands by those who stood in and
represented different movements in The Netherlands itself. It now remains to
examine that church and its views on education.

The Calvinistic day school in America did not spring full blown
upon the American scene. It came as a transplant from The Netherlands and for
many years remained a tender plant. It grew very slowly and made very little
progress for almost forty years. The American version of the Calvinistic school
began in the mind and heart of Albertus Van Raalte, who led the seceders of
1834 to American soil in 1847 and established a colony in what is now Holland,
Michigan. Van Raalte stood in a broader intellectual tradition than did most
of the seceders, and he saw in education the means by which the immigrant group
could develop a cultural outlook and, as he said, "deliver this people and their
confession from irrelevance." He thus labored long and hard but with little
success to get these early colonists to build and support schools. Concern with
getting established in a new world, combined with the belief that the public
schools in America were Christian enough, defeated him.

When the Christian Reformed Church was born in 1857, she inherited
one little school in Grand Rapids, Michigan. The long and involved story behind
the birth of the Christian Reformed Church by secession from the Dutch Reformed
Church in America is significant for education only in limited ways, and thus
need not be told here. The educational significance of this secession is that
it was made in the same tradition and spirit as the Secession of 1834 in The
Netherlands. Concern for purity of doctrine and suspicion of the world in general
made this group conceive of education in purely religious and doctrinal terms.
The first school in Grand Rapids was parochial in intent and administration,
and until the influence of the Calvinistic Revival in The Netherlands was felt
after 1880, there was no thought for any education except that which was strictly
and specifically for the perpetuation of the denomination and the Dutch heritage
in which it was rooted.

The schoolmasters in these early days were usually appointed
by and responsible to a church consistory. Although ministers rarely taught
in the schools, they were expected to supervise the teaching that went on. These
early schools sometimes were simply summer schools; sometimes they were full
day schools but carried the child only until he was nine or ten years old. Until
1890, only the Dutch language was spoken in the schools, and this practice was
justified, even after the supporters of the school had lived several decades
in America, on the ground that the church, doctrine, and hymns were in the Dutch
and that to perpetuate the heritage it was necessary to use the language in
which it was couched. These details are mentioned only to show the degree to
which the Christian Reformed Church early regarded the school as the arm of
the church, and to contrast this outlook with later movements.

For its theoretical justification for such schools, the church
referred back to the church order of the Synod of Dort, which said in Article
21:

Consistories shall see to it everywhere that there are good
schoolmasters who shall not only teach the children reading, writing, languages
and free art, but also instruct them in godliness and in Catechism.

The Christian Reformed Church early adopted this church order
for her own government, and used this article to convince her members of the
necessity of supporting these parochial schools. In using the church order to
justify parochial schools the church was making use of an article of faith which
was forged in a different country and in a different cultural context. In the
context of the Synod of Dort, Calvinism was the official religion of the state,
and the church was thus acting in conjunction with and as the agent of the state.
The church was in fact acting upon a specific mandate by the government of The
Netherlands to establish schools. In such a cultural context, where the church
and state were one, the school had a broad function of enhancing learning in
general as well as teaching church doctrine that was state-approved.

For our purposes here it is important to note that such a cultural
context and political arrangement called for active administration and control
of the schools by the church. In America rather than in The Netherlands, and
in a social context where church and state were separate, the Christian Reformed
Church could not possibly mean by Article 21 what was meant in The Netherlands
at the Synod of Dort. The article was nevertheless interpreted to mean that
the church had a warrant in the historic creeds to establish and maintain day
schools to insure her continued existence and vitality. Although this view of
the relationship between the school and the church is no longer the dominant
and most influential one in determining policy, there have always been those
who have spoken in the spirit of this ideal. Their voices have always cried
out for a closer relationship between the school and the church, with the church
supervising the school and not just cooperating with it. The plea that the church
should control the school has sometimes been made in the name of cultural separation
and sometimes in the name of the need for continued doctrinal purity. Had these
voices continued to reflect majority opinion in the Christian Reformed Church,
there would today be no Calvinistic school. There would be only Christian Reformed
parochial schools. Although more will be said later concerning the arguments
for the parochial school, we should first take a look at another tradition and
another view of the school.

There were other voices in the church, and they, too, influenced
policy and practice in the Calvinistic school movement. These voices were first
heard coming from the ministers and professional educators who came from the
Netherlands after the Calvinistic Revival there under Abraham Kuyper. On fire
for the Christian school idea, these people nevertheless saw the school as much
more than an instrument for the preservation of denominational purity. They
saw it as a working out of the Christian idea of man and society through the
study of all areas of human knowledge. It was to be a school that exhibited
a world and life view. For this they required a school which was subject to
no authority other than the Bible and the convictions of those who believed
in it. As they saw it, this then required a school not dominated by either church
or state. Since church and state were so closely united in the Netherlands,
freedom from one meant freedom from the other as well. There is some reason
to believe that these men never seriously considered whether or not state control
was a live option for Christians here in America. They were opposed to the parochial
school idea, but seem not to have seriously considered the public school idea.
While it is hardly true that the public school of the late nineteenth century
was dominated by and shaped by non-Christian forces, these Kuyperian Calvinists
did not need a thorough understanding of the social situation here in America
before making a choice in favor of the parentally controlled school. The principle
of sphere sovereignty already established that government and education were
separate spheres, and that one should not be dominated by the other. Unlike
those who represented the outlook of the Secessions, these men had neither to
assume nor to prove that the public schools were "godless" in order to justify
the private school. Their general theory of sphere sovereignty and their specific
belief that Calvinism had implications for educational theory and practice gave
them all they needed.

These Kuyperian Calvinists spoke out loudly against the parochial
school idea, and were so persuasive in the Christian Reformed Church that she
was convinced that she should give up the parochial schools which she had begun
and turn them over to societies of parents. In the denominational paper of the
time, De Wachter, there appeared an article by a certain P. R. Holtman,
a spokesman for the Kuyperian view, which shows the strong feeling which existed
against the parochialschool idea. He said:

The Christian school must not be a child of the churches,
or live by the grace of the churches, so that it would flourish or decline
in the measure that spiritual life of the church rose and declined. The unprofitableness
of the system which lowered education to the status of preparation for catechism,
the highest ideal of which was that with the use of ruler and whip the Formulas
of Unity were implanted, has long since been evident. The Christian school
requires a life-sphere of its own, with its own rationale, not as concerns
principles but as concerns administration (June 22, 1892).

Evidently convinced by this type of argumentation, the Synod
of the Christian Reformed Church in 1892 adopted a resolution favoring the organization
of a society for the promotion of Christian Reformed education and promised
such a society its moral support. Although the name of the denomination was
included in the resolution, the name of the society suggested by the Synod indicated
a less narrow intent; it was suggested that the society be called the "Society
for the Promotion of Christian Education on a Reformed Basis."

Apparently the movement for parental schools was already underway,
for such a society was organized that very year. Thus the administrative break
between the school and the church was made, and the Kuyperian ideal was achieved
in theory at least. The break directly affected only some twelve or fourteen
schools then in existence, but all schools thereafter established were begun
by societies of parents and not by the consistories of churches.

Although this was a decided shift in theory, and one with far-reaching
implications for practice, in actuality the school has endured a highly ambiguous
relationship with the Christian Reformed Church. The parochial idea - and spirit
did not die out with this official act of Synod, and the spirit of both Secessions
and the spirit of Kuyperian Calvinism have existed side by side in the church.
It has recently been observed that "the Dutch type of Calvinism can be divided
into the pro- and the anti-Kuvperian schools," and this is doubly
true of the educational system which grew out of this tradition.

Almost immediately after the administrative break took place
there was a renewed expression of the view that the Christian school still required
ecclesiastical supervision. It was feared that the judgment of individuals in
matters of religion and education would not be as valid as that of the lawful
church assembly.

A number of reforms were attempted by the leaders of this new
Kuyperian educational movement, and each of them found opposition from segments
of the church. This opposition was, and continues to be, strong enough to frustrate
some of the necessary implications of the parental rather than the parochial
idea of education. One reform advocated by these leaders was that no specific
denominational doctrines and creeds should be taught in the day school; loyalty
was to be to Reformed principles as applied to educational theory, but not to
any denominational forms and usages. Another was that the student body should
not be limited to those of Dutch Reformed persuasion: Presbyterians and Methodists
were mentioned specifically as being welcome in the schools. Another reform
advocated by this group, again resisted by some for many years, was that the
English language should be used in the schools. The church resisted this latter
reform because her doctrine and heritage were both in the Dutch language, and
it seemed to her that the preservation of the doctrine and heritage required
the preservation of the language in which they were written. If the youth were
to be able to absorb the church heritage they must learn the Dutch language.

It is largely because of this concern for the immediate welfare
of the denomination that these reforms have never been fully practiced out of
educational principle. To this day, the first two reforms are not deeply imbedded
in the practice of all the schools because of the church's direct influence
on it through the use of ministers as principals, as Bible teachers, and as
members of school boards. The use of English as the language of instruction
came about slowly and was demanded by many other non-theoretical considerations.

Although the Christian Reformed Church has never changed its
official decision concerning abandonment of the control of the school, her actual
practice has ranged all the way from careful supervision, even to the point
of getting her creeds stated as the creedal basis of the school in the constitution,
to simple moral and financial support and cooperation. However, although actual
practice would not always indicate it, there is ample evidence that the change
of mind concerning her role in Christian education was deep and enduring. Whereas
the original church order of the Christian Reformed Church directly implied
administrative supervision in the sentence, "Consistories shall see to it everywhere
that there are good schoolmasters…," this wording was changed by a later
Synod to express the idea of moral support rather than control. In 1914, twenty-two
years after the first official step in separating the church from the school,
the church officially revised Article 21 to read, "The Consistories shall see
to it that there are good Christian schools . . . ." Whereas the original reading
definitely committed the consistory to hiring the teacher, the revision did
not.

The most recent official actions on the part of Synod indicate
that the ambiguity is not yet removed from the situation of the rightful relationship
between the church and school. In 1955 the Synod accepted a statement of "Principles
of Christian Education," drawn up by a Committee on Education of the Synod.
In this statement there is equal stress on the responsibility of the parents
and of the church in education. While Basic Commitment No. 8 reads: "The responsibility
for education rests upon the parents," of the church as an agency engaged in
Christian education it is said that the church is in duty bound to encourage
and assist in the establishment and maintenance of Christian schools." The same
report again diplomatically straddles the fence by saying in the same breath
that "none of these organizations [referring to Bible conferences, Boys' Clubs,
etc.], no more than the school, are Church-sponsored," and that "if functioning
within the organized church, they naturally are encouraged by the church and
come under the supervision of constituted church authorities." Such statements
and declarations do perform at least this service, that they can be read and
agreed to by those holding different views on the role of the church in general
education. While they are confusing for educational theory they do accurately
reflect the general feeling that the church and the school are closely related
even when the exact nature of the relationship is unclear.

The Christian Reformed Church is presently faced with a further
proposed revision of the articles of its Church order bearing on education.
The committee revising the Church Order by 1957 had proposed that Article 34
(old Article 21) read:

Consistories shall diligently encourage the members of their churches to
establish and maintain good Christian schools, and shall urge believing parents
to have their children instructed in these schools. (Acts of Synod,
1957, p. 406).

During the following year the committee added at the end of
the above statement the phrase "according to the demands of the covenant"
(Acts ofSynod, 1958, p. 393). This indicates
that there was some dissatisfaction with the previous suggested meaning. One
can only speculate as to whether or not the addition changes the basic thrust
of the statement concerning the role of the church in general education. If
it does, it would be just one more example of difference of opinion in the Christian
Reformed Church on the matter.

As of 1962, the Synod has not yet officially accepted or rejected
the wording of the article under examination here. The most recent version exhibits
clearly a continuation of the shift from administrative control to encouragement
and moral support of the school. Showing only minor word changes over the 1958
version, Article 74 of the proposed revision now reads:

The consistory shall diligently encourage the members of the congregation
to establish and maintain good Christian schools, and shall urge parents to
have their children instructed in these schools according to the demands of
the covenant (Acts of Synod, 1962, p. 423).

While the church officially has continued to move away from
control and supervision of the school, influential people within the Christian
Reformed Church continue to feel that the church must give more than simple
cooperation in the way of moral and financial support. While to the observer
it might seem strangely inconsistent to have the church reject the responsibility
for administrative supervision on the one hand, and cling to responsibility
for moral supervision on the other hand, this is not so much inconsistency as
it is evidence of the crosscurrents of thought in the church concerning the
school.

A former editor of the official organ of the Christian Reformed
Church, The Banner, for many years and on numerous occasions represented
one side of the issue on the proper relation between the school and the church.
The continued presence of the parochial school idea in the mind of the church
is due in no small part to his influence and the influence of those who are
like minded. In this view the chief interest in the schools becomes that of
maintaining denominational loyalty through specific instruction in the church
creeds and in the church heritage. It regards the school as one of the main
bulwarks against religious indifference and doctrinal laxness. It holds that
the church needs the day school as its nursery, and that the church could not
long retain its vitality without the reinforcement of the school. The futures
of both are inexorably linked and thus supervision of the school becomes an
absolute necessity. In this view the church's very existence is at stake.

The justification for the view that the church should still
control the school has been summarized in the following three reasons: (1) the
church is the pillar and ground of truth and is therefore the only competent
judge of Christian education; (2) the church gives financial support and has
the right to protect her investment; and (3) there is a great need for keeping
children loyal to the Reformed faith.

This supervision and control has been accomplished to a greater
or lesser degree in the following ways: (1) through direct cooperation between
consistories and school boards; (2) through use of ministers as Bible teachers
and principals in the schools and as members of school. boards; and (3) through
getting a sound "Reformed and not merely Christian" basis for education written
into the school constitutions.

Those holding to this view have never given up the principle
that the church should direct and control the school, and the actual administration
and management has been regarded as only incidental. Should absence of administration
and management ever stand in the way of achieving and maintaining control, those
holding this view are quite ready to take upthe parochial
school idea in practice as well as in principle. The clearest expression of
this view is found in these words in another Bannerarticle. The writer
first asks: "Shall we disclose a secret?" and then continues:

It is in this view of the school that the doctrine of the covenant
as the theoretical justification for separate non-public schools come to be
most strongly emphasized. Those holding this view tend to call the schools "covenantal"
rather than either Christian or Calvinistic; and rather than seeking theoretical
justification in the Kuvperian conception of sphere sovereignty, it is held
that the need for the Christian school rests upon the doctrine of the covenant.
But it does not seem clear to everyone that separate schools follow as a logical
necessity from this doctrine. However often this position is stated, it
is rarely argued; this position is often asserted, but the assertion
rarely occurs in the context of a reasoned argument leading to the conclusion
that this doctrine always and everywhere necessitates separate schools.The doctrine, however, has been very effectively used to gain support
for the school movement. Failure to send children to the Christian school has
been commonly identified with failure to fulfill the covenantal vows takenby the parents at the time of the baptism of their children.

It has been difficult for many others, not in the Christian
Reformed Church but in the Calvinistic tradition, to see how this doctrine of
the covenant automatically eliminates the possibility of fulfilling baptismal
vows through public education that is congenial to the Christian view. For example,
the Reformed Church of America, from which the Christian Reformed Church split
in 1857, to this day calls into question the validity of this argument.

However vocal the holders of the "parochial" view have been,
it would be inaccurate to say that this view is the dominant one in the Christian
Reformed Church and in the Calvinistic school system. Official ecclesiastical
pronouncements and editorial comment in church papers do not necessarily give
a true picture of actual conditions. The teachers, principals, and board members
of the school are the ones who really determine what function the school will
in fact serve. Many voices have been raised against the narrower conception
of the function of the school, and they have come from ministers and educators
alike. Although opposition to this narrower view was more blunt, vehement, and
frequent in earlier days wben the issue was fresh, there is still considerable
resistance to limiting the school to being the arm of the church.

In recent years the National Union of Christian Schools, the
national service agency for the Calvinistic system of schools, in its publications
and through conferences has done the most to keep alive and operative the alternate
view of the function of the school. This organization was called into being
by the Chicago Alliance of Christian Schools, and since its inception it has
given unity and strength to the Calvinistic day school movement by holding annual
conventions, by publishing monthly the Christian Home and School magazine,
and by publishing textbooks and courses of study. Although its convention speakers
have often been clergymen and theologians who advocated the narrow function
of the school, the National Union has in its practices and programs broadened
its scope. It has not done this vigorously or consistently because its periodical
and its conventions are a sounding board for all opinion, but it has nevertheless
provided a non-ecclesiastical voice and has moved toward defining the function
of the school in non-ecclesiastical terms.

In one of its early conventions opposition to the continuing
spirit of parochialism was evidenced by a member of the clergy itself. In the
1926 convention Rev. E. J. Tuuk is reported as saying:

There are those who are in their religious life one-sidedly ecclesiastical
so that in cooperating in the Christian school movement they are motivated
by the consideration of the maintenance of the ecclesiastical institution
to which they belong. Their own church must be established and its continued
existence as an institution assured. The school then becomes largely an auxiliary
to the church and the education given is liable to bemarked by denominational
distinctiveness. This too has been and still is the motivation in some quarters
to the detriment of the school and the future of the children. This ecclesiastical
motive ought to lose its force entirely and we ought to rid ourselves
of separatistic aloofness where it may still be the motive (NUCS Yearbook,
1926, p. 9).

A similar note had been struck by Dr. Clarence Bouma in a convention
address the previous year. In this speech be argued that a church and a school
need a different theoretical basis. He said:

The three Forms of Unity are not an adequate platform for our
Christian school movement. They are ecclesiastical standards and as such I prize
them highly, but they are not intended to be and should not be looked upon as
an adequate platform for the Christian school movement.... For church life and
theology a confessional basis is unavoidable and essential. Not so for the Christian
School movement. Such a basis is in our Reformed principles (NUCS Yearbook,
1925, p. 121).

The more precise meaning of these "Reformed principles" and
their bearing on educational theory will be told in a later section. The important
point here is the insistence that these "Reformed principles" are not identical
with the church creeds, and that a school can be Christian without being a church
school.

The seriousness of the National Union in attempting to establish
a Christian school system free of the church is indicated by its early plans
to set up a Normal School for the training of teachers. Although the Christian
Reformed Church had a college for training of ministers at the time, the attempt
was made to set up a separate school under the auspices of the National Union.
The failure to realize this goal was a failure in establishing independence
from the Christian Reformed Church. Now the majority of the teachers in the
Calvinistic school system are trained at Calvin College, which is owned and
operated by the church. This fact has in many subtle ways made loyalty to the
school and loyalty to the Christian Reformed Church synonymous, and has lent
a definite denominational coloring to a school system that is not in principle
intended to be limited to that denomination.

Thus in many ways the Christian Reformed Church as an ecclesiastical
institution continues to dominate the school many years after she officially
renounced control of it and even changed her church order to conform to this
renunciation. At its best the present school movement exhibits both the spirit
and purpose of the Kuyperian tradition, and at its worst it still represents
a training school for the maintenance of loyalty to the Christian Reformed Church
on the part of the Christian Reformed children who make up the vast majority
of its students.

There are indications that the school movement itself is still
notclearly unified in belief concerning its legitimate connection with
this one denomination. At the NUCS convention of 1957the problem was
again raised for discussion. There was in evidence a real desire on the part
ofboth the school and the church (a number of ministers were participants)
for some kind of mutual support. There was a very real desire to clarify the
relationship between the two, but no definite answer appeared out of the discussion.
One convention speaker struck a parochial note by suggesting that there was
nothing wrong in principle with church control of the school, and that if the
financial or moral need were great enough, the schools should again become parochial.
This note was not again publicly sounded, and in the report of the sectional
meetings to the convention, the generalization was made that the church has
a redemptive function while the school has a cultural function. The relationship
was then defined in terms of cooperation rather than in terms of control.

A member of the Reformed Church who has written a doctoral
dissertation on the Christian School has noted recently that the issue is still
in doubt:

I note the current trend to bind the Christian schools closer
to the churches. Also the suggestion has been made that teachers sign the
Forms of Unity. The value of this movement in the light of the historic principle
of the separation of the Christian school society from the church is questionable.
Should not the separation of the two be kept, rather than narrowed? I believe
in many cases the accusation of parochialism in some of the Christian schools
is justifiable.

In concluding this section on the relationship between the
school and the church one might say that although the school had its historical
and theoretical roots in the church as an institution, its future lies in avoiding
any greater dependence upon denominational creeds for its theory. To the extent
that the parochial spirit still persists in the minds of the people who support
the school, the school is in danger of becoming -- or remaining -- an instrument
for five-days-a-week church extension work. In this capacity it has little to
say to the American educational world that has not been said better by the Roman
Catholic parochial system. As a parochial system, whether in name or only in
spirit, it will also have difficulty leading the way for other Protestant groups.
It will continue to have difficulty in getting other Protestants to join with
and strengthen the Christian School. In order to bring a distinctive witness
the Calvinistic school system must be free to fulfill its own calling, free
from any church, free from the state, free to be a school first, last, and always.

I now turn to a consideration of the second most influential
factor in the shaping of the school, the root that has sustained it in the past
and promises to become the main taproot.

Although the Calvinistic school in America has tried to live
up to its Kuyperian tradition as a school free to seek its own ends and not
those of any denomination, it has nevertheless always pledged allegiance to
the Bible. It has always unashamedly declared that its educational program and
policies are rooted in and justified by Biblical concepts concerning man and
society. The specific interpretation of these concepts has, of course, been
given from the point of view of Calvinism, and more specifically the Calvinism
of the Netherlands, sometimes called neo-Calvinism. It is the Bible as interpreted
by this religious and intellectual tradition that shapes the contours and provides
the intellectual roots for the Calvinistic school system.

This rootage in the Bible through a given tradition is clearly
expressed in the constitution of the National Union of Christian Schools. Article
11 states:

The basis of the National Union of Christian Schools is the Word of God as
interpreted by Reformed [i.e., Calvinistic] standards . . . .[The Union] is
committed to the Reformed world and life view. Its educational principles
must therefore be distinctively Reformed in emphasis and character.

To some these "Reformed standards" are simply the doctrinal
statements expressed in the great Reformed church creeds: The Belgic Confession,
the Heidelberg Catechism, and the Canons of Dort. These are taken to be an adequate
and relevant basis for educational theory and practice.

Others have held that these creeds are neither adequate nor
automatically relevant. An early expression of this view was cited earlier.
A similar view has been more recently suggested by the Public Relations Secretary
of the National Union. At the convention of 1951, he noted that some schools
still used the Canons of Dort as one of the creedal statements basic to the
school. He wondered what this document had to do with educational theory and
practice, since it deals exclusively with such matters as total depravity, limited
atonement, etc. He acknowledged that these were certainly proper subjects for
catechisms and confession of faith, but doubted that they could furnisha
dynamic for the field of education. (See NUCS Yearbook, 1951, pp. 131ff.)

If it is true that "Reformed standards" or "Reformed principles"
do not mean the creeds of any one church or group of churches, what then can
these expressions refer to in education? A possible answer and one only hinted
at in the literature on the school movement, is that concepts of man, God, and
society are taken from the Bible and translated into educational terminology
expressive of a position taken on educational issues. Whereas the church creeds
embody doctrinal questions, the school "creeds" embody educational questions.
For example, just as a given Calvinistic church might in its creed speak against
Arminianism on the issue of the role of man in salvation, so a Calvinistic school
might speak against progressive education on the issue of the proper organization
of subject matter. Both institutions would have creeds rooted in the Bible,
and neither would necessarily rest its case on the creeds of the other. In sum,
both institutions would be rooted in and based upon the Bible, but the school
and the church would have different creeds because they are meeting different
issues and speaking on different controversies.

The tendency to identify the creeds of the church with the
creeds of the school is perhaps understandable. The creeds of the church have
been codified and are easily accessible to all. They are stated in specific
documents, and a body of literature that interprets them is part of the tradition.
There are no such documents and no such body of literature for the school. Even
most school constitutions fail to state the position of the school on the major
issues in educational theory. However, the absence of school creeds in some
codified form does not necessarily indicate that no positions on educational
issues have been taken by the school system. School creeds are not imbedded
in documents as much as they are imbedded in practices pursued and principles
applied. The actual school system with its concrete embodiment in a given curriculum
and supported by a given organizational structure is expressive of beliefs about
education and of sides taken on educational issues.

The Calvinistic school system may be said to have spoken on
educational issues fully as much as any church synod has spoken on specifically
theological and soteriological issues. Its rootage in the Bible as interpreted
by the Reformed standards has led the school to take a position on such theoretical
questions as (1) the proper locus of control of education and the school, (2)
the proper relation between religion and education, (3) the proper sources for
and the nature of truth, (4) the source of a principle of integration for education,
and (5) the source of authority in the discipline of the leamer. An adequate
statement of these, let alone an adequate defense of them, would require a book,
and therefore cannot be given here. The areas are listed here simply to indicate
that the school system does have a creed, but that it is the creed of no church,
and that although the creed of a school system may not be drawn up and stated
in any set of documents, it nevertheless has one in the form of practices and
procedures which come to expression in that system.

The confusion and partial contradiction in the Calvinistic
school system on the matter of the proper basis for its theory and the proper
source of educational authority is natural. Both the church and the school do
eventually find a common root, the Bible. While it is an easy step it is still
a step of dubious logic to move from acknowledging a common source to declaring
that therefore the creeds of the church are identical with the creeds of the
school.

It must be admitted that this alternative position is not so
much a completed and definitive one as it is an emerging one. The literature
connected with the school movement is singularly weak in developing this interpretation
of the meaning of Reformed standards for education. The scarcity of literature
which addresses itself to this problem is an indication that the implications
of this approach have not really captured the loyalties of all those who support
these schools. The presence of the alternative position (i.e., that the church
creeds are the theoretical basis for education in the day school) has discouraged
the attempt to look deeply into the problem.

The reader need not be reminded that this failure to root the
school consistently in either church creeds or "educational creeds" based on
the Bible is just another instance of the ambiguous relationship between the
Christian Reformed Church and the Calvinistic school movement which was described
previously. It can also be easily seen that this difference of opinion concerning
the proper source of theory for the Christian school reaches back to the conflicting
movements of another culture and country which were discussed earlier. This
particular instance of confusion over the way in which the Bible affects educational
theory is but one instance of the broader confusion within the system in regard
to its theoretical foundations.

There is another question within the school movement concerning
the role of the Bible in the formulation of educational theory. It is the question
of whether or not the Bible and theology are the only source upon which an educator
can draw for the determination of theory and practice in the school. In the
literature much tribute is paid to the Bible as the single source of authority
and the sole ground of educational theory. In this view specific texts from
the Bible are used to justify the Christian school, and certain aims of the
school are established by reference to specific passages. Since many of these
tributes to the Bible as the sole source of educational principles occur in
the context of inspirational speeches and hortatory articles about Christian
education, they perhaps cannot be considered to be the best and most accurate
statement on the matter of the role of the Bible in determining theory.

There are more perceptive and analytical statements that appear
in the literature, and these indicate that often in the mind of the educator
himself the Bible is seen as providing a general scheme of values about man
and society, but that for the rest other sources of human knowledge are utilized.

A very early acknowledgment of the role of child psychology
in education is indicated in a book translated from the Dutch. In the context
of a discussion about methodology in teaching, the author says that the proper
basis for method is the investigation and study of the child with a view to
"discovery of the divine laws that control the development of the soul of the
child." A more recent and careful statement of the role of the Bible in the
determination of educational principles is contained in the following statement:

Calvinism can provide for educational theory and practice
a sound anthropology, Scripturally oriented, and because of a Scriptural orientation,
a coherent appraisal of insights in human development accruing to us from
psychology, sociology, and psychotherapy.

Thus, the Bible gives a definition of man in the light of which
discoveries in other fields can be utilized in education to solve the problems
of method, of curriculum organization, of the role of the school in a given
society, and others. This use of intellectual disciplines other than theology
in the formulation of theory in education is regarded by some as a departure
from a strict reliance on the Bible as the only infallible rule for faith and
practice. However, it apparently has a solid defender in the person of Herman
Bavinck, the Dutch theologian-educator, who said:

Religion and ethics, philosophy, and psychology contain the principles
from which the theory of education is inferred .

He is also quoted as saying that psychology and sociology constitute
the chief determiners of method. Thus, the Calvinistic school system is basically
rooted in the Bible, but it utilizes insights from other disciplines which are
either established by fact or which seem to be consistent with Biblical insights.

There are also other ways in which this school system has shown
that it is rooted in the Bible. The curriculum of the typical school in this
system has in it systematic training in Bible knowledge and the implications
of Scriptural teachings for life. The precise way in which the Bible should
be treated in the day school has not always been clearly enough defined to distinguish
the day school from the Sunday school or from the catechism class. This is not
surprising, because it is simply another illustration of the larger unsettled
question of the relation of the school to the church.

There is in the tradition a serious attempt to deal with the
problem of the proper content and approach for the teaching of the Bible as
an academic subject in the day school. just a few years after the formal organization
of the NUCS, a yearly convention was devoted to the theme of "The Bible and
Christian Education." An article prepared by the Executive Committee of the
Board of the Union set forth a suggested plan for correlating the activities
of the various agencies in the teaching of the Bible. Deploring the tendency
to duplicate activity and content in the Sunday school, the catechism class,
and the Christian day school, the committee suggested a "proper division of
labor." Basing its contention on the "diversified characters of the institutions
themselves," it held that insofar as the Bible narrative is used in catechetical
instruction, those Biblical passages should be selected which "lend themselves
for indoctrinating the youth and which tend to prepare them for intelligent
church membership" (NUCS Yearbook, 1925, p. 16).

They continued by suggesting "that the Sunday School . . .
seek to develop the devotional phase of life." Thus "those passages of the Bible
should be selected which particularly bring out this phase of life." In distinction
from Sunday school and the catechism class the day school "finds its chief objective
in preparing the pupils for Christian participation in life in its most general
aspects ... ; it should be the task of the Christian day school to cover the
Bible in a systematic way with special emphasis upon its application to the
practical phases of life."

At the same convention a minister held that chief use of the
Bible in the day school was simply inspirational. After giving an extensive
survey of all the great writers, painters, artists, and statesmen who had been
inspired to do great things by the Bible, he advocated that thisaspect
of the Bible be what the day school emphasize.

Since that time no clearcut position on the matter of the nature
and content of Bible as an academic subject has been expressed. Actual practices
vary considerably. Materials published by the National Union suggest something
of the following pattern of content: single Bible stories in the early grades;
Bible history, perhaps including the life of Christ, in the middle grades; and
church history and Reformed doctrine courses in the upper grades. There is little
written evidence that recent supporters of the school have been greatly concerned
over the "proper division of labor" between the home, the school, and the church
on thismatter. The failure of the school system to make clear how it
differs from the church in its objectives in teaching Bible is but a further
instance of the school's dependence upon the churches for its theory. While
there have been in the traditions of the school lines of demarcation laid down,
they have not been followed with any consistency.

Much more could be said about the role of the Bible in the
curriculum of this school, as well as about its role in the construction of
educational theory, but in a limited paper such as this, space permits discussion
of only one more concept. In any school system which attempts to incorporate
the Bible into its curriculum, there arise at least two dangers, and each of
these is a real threat to the distinctiveness of the Calvinistic school movement.
One danger is that when Bible is included as a course in the curriculum, it
remains solely an addition without being integrated with any of the rest
of the curriculum. This results in a dualism between religion and the rest of
life, between Bible and the rest of the curriculum. Such a dualism may be said
to obtain in the public school, where religion must be taken up as a separate
social phenomenon which affects only the personal emotional life of the student.
There has been a fear that this could be the fate of Bible studies in the Calvinistic
school. One Christian educator pointed up the problem of integration when he
said:

I can conceive of a school being not a Christian school at
all with a strong Bible Department in it, and I can conceive of a Christian
school, being a very good one, too, without a Bible Department in it . . .
So my suggestion is that we try the program of integration, but that we integrate
not around the Bible department or a Bible course, but around a philosophy
that is thoroughly God-like, God-permeated in character."

This emphasizes the point that it is not simply Bible study
alongside study of other areas, but Bible study integrated with study of other
areas that makes education Christian.

The second danger, fully as great, is that the Bible will dominate
the curriculum in the sense that study in all areas of human knowledge is engaged
in primarily for the purpose of illustrating and reinforcing the validity of
Biblical truths rather than for seeking out new truths. This may be said to
be the case in some Fundamentalist schools. Then literature become a series
of illustrations of God's love, or man's sin, or the disastrous consequences
of man's rejection of religion, and so forth. Scientific findings then are utilized
for their ability to exhibit that the Bible after all does have accurate facts
about the physical universe. In its extreme form this view of education holds
that the Bible alone contains all the truth that man needs to know, and that
the Christian engages in study only to reinforce this conviction.

The Calvinistic school system can succumb to neither of these
temptations without losing its distinctiveness. It is firmly rooted in the Bible,
but the kind of educational theory derived from the Bible and the kind of integration
achieved between it and other areas of study will determine whether or not the
school system remains consistent with its desire to be different not only from
public education and parochial education, but also from Fundamentalist education.
The proper integration of the Bible with the curriculum is not an easy matter,
but the Calvinistic tradition of a general and special revelation as exemplified
in the writings of Herman Bavinck offers a theoretical basis for such integration.
In this dual conception of revelation God is said to speak not only through
His Word but also through the world, and each of these is a legitimate and valid
source of truth about God and man. The single voice with which both are held
to speak prevents the dualism between religion and other areas of study so typical
of public education, and the distinction between them prevents the complete
domination of the one over the other so typical of some Fundamentalist education.
This view holds with John Henry Newman, the British educator of the last century,
that "religious truth is not only a portion, but a condition of general knowledge,"
and that science and religion in fruitful interaction produce that truth.

If space permitted, evidence could be gathered from the literature
to show that both these dangers exist in the Calvinistic school system. Here
I have given only what seemed to be the middle course demanded by at least one
aspect of the tradition. While illustrn no lessening of the desire that the school be firmly rooted
in the Bible. Although the influence of the church has fluctuated, and although
the influence of the Netherlands has decreased, there is every indication that
the Word remains as strong as ever in its influence on the movement. In spite
of differing interpretations as to its best shape and form, this root of the
school has remained sturdy and strong. The real job remaining here, it seems
to this writer, is the translation of biblical principles into positions taken
on educational questions. This series of positions, along with their biblical
support, would then be the "creed" of the Calvinistic school.

* * * *

I have pointed out that the Calvinistic school system of today
cannot be rightly understood except in terms of its unique religious and intellectual
tradition. I have attempted to give a brief sketch of each of the major influences
that have played upon and affected the school system. I have suggested that
it has its roots in an intellectual tradition, namely Calvinism, a cultural
tradition, namely, that of the Netherlands, an ecclesiastical tradition, namely,
the Christian Reformed Church, and a religious tradition, namely, the Bible.
It is important to remember that these traditions have not operated independently
of each other, but have interacted with each other and blended their influences
on the school. While the most underlying and all-pervasive influence on its
theory has probably been that of Calvinism, this has been filtered through other
traditions and movements, producing a system built on a composite of both complementary
and conflicting foundations.

In these articles the emphasis has been placed upon the conflicts
and confusions in the theoretical undergirding of the school. The reasons for
this emphasis are twofold. One reason is that space forbids a treatment of all
facets of the educational thought of this school; one must always be selective
in discussing any movement such as this. The other, and more important, reason
is that it is the confusion and conflicts in the realm of theory that keep the
school from being as effective, and from being as strong a witness as it could
be. It is this area that now calls for the closest attention of parents and
educators if the school is to grow and mature.

A discussion of the theoretical foundations of this school
movement would not be complete without some attention to still another influence
in the life and thought of the school. I turn to a consideration of the final
root to be examined.

The Calvinistic school system in America has now existed for
over a century. It was begun and maintained by people who were essentially immigrants,
newcomers to America with its democratic social patterns. The first generation
of supporters of this school resisted Americanization and looked to the Netherlands
for guidance and leadership in education. Since then, the Netherlands influence
has inevitably waned and has been lost on the second and third generation now
supporting school system. This shriveling of one of the roots of the school
system naturally would cause some uneasiness and lack of direction. However,
even the most nostalgic have realized that here in America there are relationships
existing between the church and state, and the state and the school, that do
not exist in the Netherlands. This realization of cultural differences has caused
the school systems of the two countries to drift apart, and there is now very
little interchange of ideas between the two.

This shriveling.of one root was temporarily compensated for
by a strengthening of another root: the one reaching into the Christian Reformed
Church. For many years the school drew - to some extent it still draws - on
the church for its theoretical justification. We have already noted the forces
that prevented this root from becoming permanently attached to the school system.

The weakening of these two influences on theory of the school
naturally produced a feeling for the need of new roots, roots that were suitable
for the climate and situation here in America. Even in the early days of the
movement there was a realization that the Calvinistic school needed to adapt
itself to the American social and educational scene if it was to survive. A
convention speaker of over thirty years ago put it well in these words:

Our schools must become thoroughly American. Unless we strip our schools
of that which smacks of foreign soil, our schools will have no appeal for
the rising American generations. To interest Americans our schools must be
American. The school must be organized along American lines; its work must
be conducted in the American spirit; its methods must be those of America(NUCS Yearbook, 1923-24, p. 152).

This early expression - others could be cited - shows that
the desire for cultural relevance was sincere and deeply seated. The leaders
and educators, if not all of the people, wanted the schools to be busy striking
roots in America.

After the initial concern for the strengthening of
roots in American soil, there is a strange silence on this matter in the literature.
For almost two decades (roughly 1925-45) there was little talk about
cultural relevance. There was little concern and discussion about what the school
must do in American democracy that it bad not done in the Netherlands. While
the public school literature of this period is full of discussions of the implications
for education of democracy and the democratic spirit, the Calvinistic school
seems not to have been much concerned about these theoretical matters.

If space permitted, one might speculate about the causes for
this indifference to cultural relevance. One might speculate about the extent
to which parochialism, or fear of worldliness, or the immigrant spirit, or concern
with the more practical matters of building and staffing schools was the chief
reason for this lack of concern. An adequate defense of any of these judgments
about why there was no attempt in these years to build a philosophy of education
oriented to the American social scene would call for analysis and documentation
that would go beyond the scope of this essay.

Without offering the evidence to support the judgment, I would
say that the initial enthusiasm for relating the school to American democracy
was tempered by the realization that loss of distinctiveness is often the price
for cultural adaptation. There was a fear that the distinctiveness of the school
system would be swallowed up in the process. There was a realization that whereas
there was danger in isolationism and separatism, there was also danger in cultural
absorption. The leaders realized that time and acclimatization have a way of
emptying content from old slogans and passwords; they knew that the intellectual
vacuum thus created was perfect for the unwitting absorption into the school
of values antithetical to those in the school's tradition. For these reasons
the school's roots in American democracy grew not at all for twenty years, and
even now they are small and growth is tentative.

It is important to note that this slowness in adjusting to
a new cultural context is not due to absence in the theory of the need for cultural
relevance. While the separatistic theory behind the movement does favor a continued
isolation of the student from cultural forces in American life, and therefore
favors education that is purged of all opposing opinions and points of view,
there is stronger and more powerful theory to support an education that is committed
to a searching analysisof all points of view. This latter point of view
is in evidence in much of the textbook program of the National Union. A textbook
program undertaken by a small group who are protesting against the texts in
common use in other schools might easily operate on the principle of exclusion;
the textbooks could try to make a given subject area Christian by excluding
from their pages all beliefs, arguments, evidence, or literature that do not
support the views regarded as desirable. The representatives of the National
Union have always insisted that the idea behind separate textbooks is not that
of closing out from the student's mind everything with which Calvinists do not
agree. The idea is simply to provide criticism and analysis of those opposing
views. In the same vein a supporter of this school system argued that in order
for the choice for Christianity on the part of the student to be meaningful,
he must be thoroughly acquainted with the alternatives to Christianity as a
way of life. The Christian school he regarded as the proper place for the presentation
of such alternatives.

Even though there is some evidence that the theory behind the
school movement opposes cultural separatism and withdrawal, there is not even
today any body of literature which attempts to deal with the influence of democratic
ideas on education. There is next to nothing in the way of a sociology of education
for the Calvinistic school, even though the literature on this matter for the
public school is voluminous. The distinctive role the Calvinistic school can
play in American democracy, and what democratic values are consistent with the
intellectual and religious tradition of this school: these are relatively unexplored
areas and undeveloped roots.

Within the last decade the literature
of the movement has contained signs of an increasing awareness that the school
needs more roots, needs more theoretical foundation than it has had in the past.
While need for cultural relevance is not prominent in this growing awareness,
any assessment of theory should lead to an examination of the present cultural
roots of the school. Recent active interest in theory is evident from the regularity
with which calls for statements of philosophy of education have come from various
sources. This interest led the NUSC in 1950 to appoint a committee to produce
a statement of a philosophy of education for the school system. Two different
statements by Calvin College professors of education have since then been distributed
by the National Union, but neither of them has thus far captured the attention
and loyalties of the typical teacher or parent.Neither of them has been
discussed to any extent in the literature, nor has the typical principal or
teacher made much use of them in setting up or altering major educational policies
in the schools.

The failure of these statements of the philosophy of education
of the Calvinistic school is not due so much to any defect in the statements
as it is due to a lack of underlying agreement in the system as to what is involved
in making this school distinctive. An adequate statement of this kind can be
made only when there is underlying community of belief and persuasion in terms
of which the statement can be made. At this point, this unified outlook on Christian
education is not so much a given to be set down in writing as it is a goal to
be achieved.

There is some further evidence within the last decade that
those within the school system are concerned about theory and about the distinctiveness
of their school system. The publication of textbooks, class manuals, and curriculum
guides by the National Union indicates that they see that their point of view
needs concrete expression in terms of curriculum content and practices. They
see their school as both related to and distinct from the public school and
its cultural emphases and values. Discussion and evaluation of these publications
is carried on in both the Christian Home and School magazine and in various
teacher's institutes and conventions. Such discussions give evidence of continuing
and even increasing concern about the theory underlying the Calvinistic school
movement.

Most significant of recent attempts in this area are the Pilot
Series in Literature (Book 1, 1957; Book 11, 1959) and Under God (1962),
a civics text by William Hendricks, both published by the NUCS. In both of these
there is evidence that the instructional raw materials of the areas of literature
and government for the junior high have been reorganized with a view to achieving
objectives that are explicitly Christian.

Serious attempts have also been made to use Biblical concepts
in an appraisal of intellectual disciplines such as psychology and philosophy.
Although much needs to be done, there is a start toward recognizing the role
of these disciplines in formulating theory for the Calvinistic school.

Examination of the role of the school in a democracy in editorials
of the Christian Home and School magazine (e.g., January, 1959), as well
as analysis of its relation to the state as an institution, are valuable contributions
to the literature. Consistent with this awakened concern for our cultural relevance
is the decision of the NUCS at its 1962 convention to go on record as declaring
that the Christian school has a right to government aid.

Such are the few but heartening signs that the school is coming
of age, that it is looking to its foundations. It is just beginning to size
up both itself and the culture in which it exists. If this activity and concern
continues for the next decade, those years might well become the "Age of Cultural
Relevance."

It has not been my intention to give the impression that the
Calvinistic school movement is adrift or that it is without theoretical rootage.
To say that the theoretical foundations of this school system are undergoing
changes because of the shrinkage of old roots is not to say that there is not
a constant element. There has been such a constant element, which has given
and can continue to give stability to the educational system. Both the Bible
and the world and life view of Calvinism remain to guide the school in its development
of new roots in a new culture and in new intellectual disciplines.

Although evidence could be given to show that in the present-day
movement there are both forces which tend to encourage the development of new
roots, and forces which tend to make the school cling to and strengthen old
roots, such evidence would be simply repetitions of what has been written above.
It should be sufficient to summarize here by repeating that an all-pervasive
dual influence has played upon the school system since its birth in the Christian
Reformed Church over a hundred years ago. This dual emphasis, stemming from
two different interpretations of Calvinism, has blurred the outlines of the
theory behind the system. This blurring of principles governing school policies
has made the school susceptible to misunderstanding by those outside the system.
On the one hand, it has often appeared to be the product of a narrow and exclusivistic
sectarian and separatistic spirit, and thus identified with the lunatic fringe
of Protestantism. The school is then regarded as being divisive in a culture
that places a premium upon cooperation and cultural interaction. On the other
hand, more serious investigation into the roots of the movement indicates that
the school need not be this at all. The school system can be seen as a reflection
of a religio-pbilosophical way of life which, far from being anticultural, is
eager to influence society at large and to play an active role in the molding
of the sociopolitical system known as American democracy. Viewed from thisperspective, this educational system could be called divisive only in the
sense that every minority group which speaks with conviction on any issue prevents
society from achieving complete uniformity of thought andopinion. It
is only when democracy is equated with uniformity of thought that such a school
could be considered to be divisive and undemocratic.

Given the former view of the school system, there is no desperate
need for cultural roots, no real need for determining what democratic social
and political theory has to say about educational theory and practice. In this
view of the school its function is served best if it remains apart from the
mainstream of American culture; if it isolates its children from both the temptations
and ideas of present-day America. In the latter view of the school its cultural
function is not to exist in isolation and separation from American society in
general and American education in particular, but to give concrete expression
to alternative views of the proper and adequate theoretical foundations for
education in American democracy. This the school can do effectively only if
it develops deeper roots in the culture which it wishes to influence.

The Calvinistic school system cannot be said to have really
decided in which direction it wishes to go on this matter. Almost three decades
ago the history and the future prospects of this school system were summed up
in the following judgment and question:

Our Christian school has reached a crisis in its history. As the movement
ceases to be fed by forces hailing directly from across the seas, and as many
a potent watchword of the past has lost its meaning and its power, the grave
question which we face today is this: Whether we can resell the idea and ideal
of specifically Christian education to our people, and especially to our younger
generation that has become thoroughly Americanized (NUCS Yearbook, 1929-30,
p. 73).

That judgment still could be made today, and that question is as grave today
as it was then.